Tag: Great

Love God, Love Neighbor: The Great Commandment Grounded in the Incarnation

Leave it to Barth to see an analogy of the incarnation (the hypostatic union) as the inner-theological basis of the Great Commandment found in Matthew 22:37–40. Let me share that now, with a concluding remark following. It is taken from Barth’s Church Dogmatics III/2 §45: For a true understanding, we can and must think of what is popularly called the twofold law of love—for God and neighbour (Mk. 12.29-31 and par.). It is no accident that it was Jesus who summed up the Law and the prophets in this particular way. He was speaking primarily and decisively of the law…

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What Great Tradition?

In theological circles these days there is a push to recover the so-called Great Tradition, of the type of thinking, in regard to the Trad, or also, the so-called Consensus Patrum, that we get in Vincent of Lérins. That is, a type of generalization a flattening out of a perceived consensus of the faithful that has some type of agreed upon core of the core of orthodoxy that ostensibly the majority of Christian theologians, “orthodox” ones, have affirmed and submitted to as regulative for their own respective theological offerings. Contemporaneously, we have movements by Reformed theologians, particularly Baptist ones currently,…

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A Response to Plato’s Impact on the Great Tradition of the Church

Earlier this morning I listened to Credo Magazine’s podcast in which Matthew Barrett interviews Louis Markos, the author of From Plato to Christ, among other books. You can listen to that podcast here. They were discussing, of course, the role and impact that Plato had, and continues to have on the development of Christian theology. Barrett often likes to refer to the Great Tradition of the Church, which of course is really more of a Latin way to think about things theological and ecclesial (the Greeks have the Consensus Patrum, ha!) I of course repudiate the general prolegomenon, or theological…

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